Illinois Wesleyan professor voted for Mandela

BLOOMINGTON — A professor from Illinois Wesleyan University is recalling his vote for Nelson Mandela, and his sense of awe at the time of the historic election in South Africa.

William Munro told The Pantagraph that he traveled home to South Africa in 1994 to vote in the country’s first multiracial election.

Munro is a professor in the university’s political science department who specializes in African studies and international development. He said he worked against apartheid as a college student before leaving South Africa in the 1980s for graduate school in the United States.

“I came to the U.S. to get my Ph.D. because I knew apartheid couldn’t last,” Munro said. “We needed to understand how Africa worked because we were going to become an African nation.”

He said he was surprised the 1994 election was happening after so much violence and turmoil in the country, and remembered friends of his family stocked up on food and water in the days before the election out of fear of civil unrest.

South Africa, he believes, was able to make a peaceful transition to democracy because of Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation. Mandela, the former South African president, died Thursday at age 95.

“He always said, ‘We are going to move on.’ His language was so moderated. ‘We’re all South Africans, and we’re moving forward together,’ “ Munro said.

Munro said it’s hard to find someone comparable to Mandela who “projects such moral authority.” Still, he said, Mandela’s legacy is complex and won’t be fully understood for some time.